Steve Pike

THE ancient art of logging has nosed its way back into the coastal psyche.

No, we’re not in Canada with booted lumberjacks and their comical dance on timber logs as they literally roll down a river (the logs not the loggers) to the port to be loaded on ships.

This is about a similar dance, and also through water. Only this time it’s a surfer who performs ballet back and forth to the nose of his or her single fin longboard, to hang five or ten.

The connection seems obvious. The surfing loggers, like their timber counterparts, must move quickly back and forth to while keeping their balance.

The flow of the glide is interspersed with quick bursts of speed, just like you have to do on a big tree pole floating in a river.

While I couldn’t find any reference, but surely that’s how logging got its name, and perhaps also to differentiate from longboarding.

Longboarding is completely different, the purists say. The only similarity is their length – starting at nine foot (almost 3m). Longboards normally have three fins. Logs must have one. People can ride longboards like shortboards, with power and sharp moves. They carve up the waves like a roast chicken dinner.

Loggers ride logs with flow and a cruising style and on nice, little waves, preferably those that peel down a point or sandbar. You can ride big waves with a longboard, but that’s not what logging is all about.

The Cobbles Classic in Port Elizabeth is a winner, the loggers say, because the wave is small and peels, enabling all the cool moves. And it’s taking off. New logging events are popping up everywhere.

Just this week I saw a post about the La Muse Classic, set for Muizenberg at the end of July.

They say its the first ladies longboard surfing event “run by women for women” with the aim of encouraging “lady longboarders of all ages and styles to come together to compete and grow as a female surfing community”.

Logging is cool. It’s the antidote to the thrash and burn mentality of many in the shortboarding community, who have grown up with the elastic athleticism of the likes of Kelly Slater and the the thrash and burn brigade.

The La Muse Classic comes just after the JBay Winterfest announced the inclusion of the JBay Loggers Classic this year at Lower Point towards the end of July.

I have also heard that wooden surfboard craftsman Cobus Joubert is planning a logging event called the Rolling Wood Single Fin Classic. The third edition of the Logjam event at Surfers Corner, Muizenberg, takes place at the beginning of June. This cool local event also includes an a

ON TRACK FOR THE TITLE: Jordy Smith bowed out of the Oi Rio Pro this week, but made the quarter-finals.